The Tamesis
Researchers from Australia’s Curtin University have provided evidence that humans, not glaciers, moved the rocks used in the construction of Stonehenge to Britain. Their findings were published in the Jan. 21 issue of the journal Communications Earth & Environment.
Stonehenge, located on Salisbury Plain in England, was built in stages by Neolithic and Bronze Age people around 3000 BC to 1500 BC. It consists of an outer circle and inner horseshoe shape of sandstone tristone and an inner arc of smaller bluestone.
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Geological evidence confirms that the monument’s sandstone boulders came from the Marlborough Downs 20 miles away, while the smaller dolomite bluestone was quarried in the Preseli Hills in southwest Wales, 180 miles to the northwest. Stonehenge’s sarsen (sandstone blocks) weigh an average of 25 tons; the bluestones weigh an average of 2 to 5 tons, with the largest weighing 40 tons. The altar stone at Stonehenge weighs six tons and is now thought to have originated in Scotland.
Until this month, there were competing theories about how the stones moved such long distances, with some suggesting humans moved them by land or sea and others suggesting they were deposited by glaciers during the Ice Age.
It now seems almost certain that the stones were moved. Curtin University scientists tested sediment collected from streams around Stonehenge to look for mineral evidence of glacial activity. According to their findings, the area remained glaciated during the Pleistocene, making it unlikely that Stonehenge’s boulders were transported by direct glaciers.
However, exactly how humans moved the stones remains a mystery. “Some people say the stones may have sailed down from Scotland or Wales, or they may have been transported over land using log logs, but in reality we may never know,” said Dr Anthony Clark, a geologist in Curtin University’s Mineral Systems Time Scale Group and lead author of the study. “But what we do know is that ice almost certainly doesn’t move the stone.”
